The growing Latino population is directly affecting institutions of higher education. Predominantly White Institutions (PWIs), whose stated missions do not specifically address Latinos, are becoming Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSIs). As HSIs continue to emerge across the country, Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) are also responding to demographic shifts, especially in Texas. Although their historic mission focuses on educating African Americans, some Texas HBCU presidents and administrators maintain that their supportive campus environment could serve as a possible opportunity for Latino student success. HBCU outreach efforts offer a variety of areas for further investigation, but the intent of this study was to examine the first, critical year and perceptions of sense of belonging. Furthermore, since Mexican Americans represent the majority of Latinos in Texas, indeed the country, this qualitative study specifically focused on the first-year experiences of Mexican Americans in a Texas HBCU. The primary methods for data collection included two semi-structured one-on-one interviews, a student questionnaire, campus observations, and analytic memos. Thus, the current study sought to fully document the first-year experience and perceptions of sense of belonging as recounted by second- to fifth-year Mexican American students enrolled in a Texas HBCU. / text

Utilizing elements of Lightfoot and Davis’s (1997) portraiture method and life history interviews, this qualitative research study explores the portraits of four Mexican-origin scholarship boys. Two Mexican-origin students and two professors were selected from a snowball sample. A snowball sample consisted of gathering referrals from graduate students and faculty who contacted me through email to comment on their personal identification with the scholarship boy themes discussed in the essay I authored, "Lost in Degree: a Chicano PhD Student’s Search for Missing Clothes" (2007). I use the term “Mexican-origin” as a concept that identifies the subjects of this study as being of Mexican descent. All of the participants were born and raised in low SES, urban settings in the United States and they are children of Mexican-born parents. Hoggart’s (1957/2006) scholarship boy framework serves as the primary theoretical lens guiding this work. Rodriguez’s (1982) seminal work on this topic, Hunger of Memory, enumerates how this concept may apply to Mexican-origin scholarship boys. This study also utilizes Dubois’s (1903) double consciousness and Anzaldúa’s (1999) mestiza consciousness to analyze the ways in which Mexican-origin scholarship boys used culturally situated constructions of giftedness, “ghetto nerd” (Diaz, 2007) masculinities, and philosophical perspectives related to “home” to pursue academic excellence and cope/challenge the microgressions they experienced in K-12 schooling and higher education. The scholarship boys in this research provide critical information germane to the struggles and strategies used by academically successful Mexican-origin students as they negotiate the experiences related to the contrasting working-class culture of their upbringing and the middle-class culture of academia. While studies often focus on academically low-performing Latino students, this work explores the narratives of working-class Latino students who attained a graduate level education. Moreover, this research complicates clean “victory narratives” by unearthing various aspects of loss and gain inherent to the Mexican-origin scholarship boy trajectory. Findings inform scholarship in the areas of pedagogy, education reform, philosophy of education, education policy, curriculum, and revisionist conceptualizations of giftedness and human development. / text

This study tested predictions that potentially explain why Latinos, despite being disadvantaged in a number of ways related to poor health such as low education and low income, still fare better for some health outcomes compared to Anglos; A phenomenon know as the Latino health paradox. In particular, loneliness was hypothesized as a key mediator in the relationship between Latino cultural values and three health outcomes: overall health, depression and engaging in protective health practices. Cultural values of familism and spiritual well-being were predicted to be inversely related to loneliness, and reduced loneliness was predicted to be associated with beneficial health outcomes. Ethnicity (i.e., being Latino) was also hypothesized to predict endorsement of cultural values. Participants were 319 adults, including 116 Anglos and 139 Latinos between the ages of 19-88. Results indicated that being Latino predicted endorsing the values of spiritual well-being and familism. Spiritual well-being had an association with better health through reduced loneliness for both Latinos and Anglos, and the effect size was greater for Latinos. Familism predicted reduced loneliness and had a significant indirect effect on health through loneliness for Anglos, but not for Latinos; a result that may be attributable to the obligatory nature of familial relationships in Latino culture. Finally, age did not moderate the impact of familism or spiritual well-being on health through loneliness for Latinos or Anglos, suggesting that the indirect effects on health through loneliness are consistent throughout the lifespan.

This dissertation is a critical ethnographic study of institutional, ideological, and cultural factors influencing the educational pathways of low-income Latino/a students. The study lasted for nine months, and research was conducted in two field sites: a public high school and a public university in the Southwest. There were eighteen research participants--seventeen students and one teacher. A funds of knowledge approach combined with a Latino/a Critical Theory lens and best practices in college access allow a consideration of these factors in public schooling. I balanced institutional data with interviews, writing samples, and class discussions, and I found that factors hindering students' persistence included material conditions such as overcrowding, ideological constraints such as low expectations, and a cultural disconnect between students' values and the values embedded in school curricula and policies. Although these Latino/a students demonstrate experiential critical literacy, the students are not given an opportunity to connect their lived experiences to theory in school, which can hinder college-going attitudes. To foster critical democracy, practitioners of First-Year Composition have an opportunity to rethink our purpose and goals to make sure that what we advocate in theory--college persistence for all students--matches up with our practice. This study suggests remedies to ensure that in a system in which social, economic, and political inequities are fed by and feed our inequitable educational system, we can take an active role in reshaping the educational pipeline by working in partnership with public schools and communities to bring equity to college access and retention efforts.

Racism persists individually and institutionally in the U.S. and race-based comedy prevails in media, accepted by diverse audiences as jokes. Media priming and Social Identity Theory theoretically ground this two-part experimental study that examines Latino participants' judgments of in-group (Latino) and out-group (White) alleged offenders in judicial cases after being primed with race-based stereotype comedy performed by an in-group (Latino) or out-group (White) comedian. First, participants read race-based stereotype comedy segments and evaluated them on perceptions of the comedian, humor, enjoyment, and stereotypicality. Second, participants read two criminal judicial review cases for alleged offenders and provided guilt evaluations. Importantly, a distinction was made between high and low Latino identifier participants to determine whether racial identity salience might impact responses to in-group and/or out-group members in comedy and judicial contexts. The results reveal that the high Latino identifiers found the race-based comedy segments more stereotypical than did the low Latino identifiers. Latino participants rated the comedy higher on enjoyment when the comedian was perceived to be a Latino in-group member as opposed to a White out-group member. The high Latino identifiers rated the White alleged offender higher on guilt than the Latino alleged offender after being primed with race-based comedy. Simply projecting in-group or out-group racial identity of comedians and alleged offenders with name manipulations in the study influenced how participants responded to the comedy material, and persisted in guiding guilt judgments on alleged offenders in the judicial reviews based on participants' Latino identity salience. A Latino comedian's position as popular joke-teller in the media overrides in-group threat, despite invoking in-group stereotypes in humor. Even with greater enjoyment expressed for Latino comedians' performing stereotypical race-based material, the tendency to react more harshly against perceived out-group members as a defense strategy to maintain positive in-group salience remained in real-world judgments on alleged offenders. Despite the claim that light-hearted comedy is meant to be laughed at and not taken seriously, jokes that disparage racial groups as homogeneous, simplistic, and criminal impact subsequent responses to out-group members in a socially competitive attempt to maintain positive in-group identity, to the detriment of out-groups.

Submitted by Ricardo Pessoa Dos Santos null (ricopessoa@gmail.com) on 2017-12-14T17:35:33Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertação.pdf: 4489608 bytes, checksum: 2c9d751844c4b178546f2154b0718705 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Elza Mitiko Sato null (elzasato@ibilce.unesp.br) on 2017-12-14T18:53:30Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 santos_rp_me_sjrp.pdf: 4489608 bytes, checksum: 2c9d751844c4b178546f2154b0718705 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2017-12-14T18:53:30Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 santos_rp_me_sjrp.pdf: 4489608 bytes, checksum: 2c9d751844c4b178546f2154b0718705 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2017-11-29 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES) / Iremos apresentar a um grupo de alunos do Ensino Médio da rede pública de Ensino do Estado de São Paulo, o mundialmente conhecido quebra cabeças Sudoku, e realizar com eles várias atividades buscando apresentá-lo como subsídio didático na aprendizagem de conceitos matemáticos importantes, além de proporcionar oportunidades de aprimorar a concentração e o raciocínio lógico. Iremos explorar conceitos matemáticos ocultos por trás de suas linhas, colunas e blocos, partindo de uma das primeiras perguntas que podem ser feitas: Qual é a quantidade total de jogos válidos existentes? Para responde-la, será proposto a realização de diversas atividades, primeiramente com um Shidoku (matriz 4 × 4), em seguida iremos calcular o total desses jogos. O tamanho reduzido dessa grade, facilita os cálculos manuais, permitindo visualizar e compreender o processo utilizado, aproveitando para introduzir o princípio fundamental da contagem. A discussão principal desse trabalho, concentra-se na exploração de um método para se determinar a quantidade de jogos válidos existentes para um Sudoku, e para isso, utilizaremos as demonstrações de Bertrand Felgenhauer e Frazer Jarvis. Também apresentaremos um método capaz de gerar uma grade completa de Sudoku, partindo de uma matriz quadrada de ordem 3, que em seguida, será utilizada para gerar uma solução de Sudoku ortogonal. Finalizando, iremos apresentar e explorar algumas formas diferenciadas para os quebra cabeças Sudoku, mostrando variações no formato dos blocos, no tamanho das grades e uma variação que utiliza formas geométricas em suas pistas (Shapedoku). Como desafio de leitura, pesquisa e aprofundamento, será proposto o problema ainda em aberto do número mínimo de dados iniciais para se ter um jogo válido. Podemos afirmar que um dos objetivos esperados, é que tal atividade venha interferir na concentração e raciocínio, auxiliando nas atividades propostas nesse trabalho e que possam ser utilizadas em outros problemas do cotidiano. / We will present to a group of high school students of the public Education of Sao Paulo state, the world-known puzzle Sudoku, and perform with them several activities seeking to present it as a didactic subsidy in the learning important mathematical concepts, besides opportunities to enhance concentration and logical reasoning. We will explore hidden mathematical concepts behind their lines, columns and blocks, starting from one of the rst questions that can be asked: What is the total number of valid games in existence? To answer this question, it will be proposed to perform several activities, rst with a Shidoku (4 × 4 matrix), then we will calculate the total of these games. The reduced size of this grid facilitates manual calculations, allowing to visualize and understand the process used, taking advantage to introduce the fundamental principle of counting. The main discussion of this paper focuses on the exploration of a method to determine the amount of valid games existing for a Sudoku, and for that, we will use the demonstrations of Bertrand Felgenhauer and Frazer Jarvis. We will also present a method capable of generating a complete Sudoku grid, starting from a square matrix of order 3, which will then be used to generate an orthogonal Sudoku solution. Finally, we will introduce and explore some di erent shapes for the Sudoku puzzle, showing variations in the shape of the blocks, the size of the grids and a variation that uses geometric forms in their tracks (Shapedoku). As a challenge for reading, searching and deepening, the open problem of the minimum number of initial data to have a valid game will be proposed. We can say that one of the expected objectives is that such activity will interfere in concentration and reasoning, helping in the activities proposed in this paper and that can be used in other daily problems. / 3107510001F5

BACKGROUND: Disparities in access to quality chronic pain treatment options disproportionately affect minorities. Although there is increasing evidence about the effectiveness of complementary and integrative medicine (CIM) to help in the treatment of pain, little is known about how low income minorities would benefit from having greater access to CIM. The Integrative Medical Group Visit (IMGV) model incorporates CIM in a medical group visit setting with the goal of increasing access to CIM. OBJECTIVE: The aims of this pilot study were to test 1) the feasibility of a Spanish language IMGV and 2) its effectiveness to reduce pain and improve function in Spanish speakers with chronic pain. METHODS: The study setting is the Family Medicine Clinic at Boston Medical Center. Adult Spanish speakers with chronic pain for at least 12 weeks were included; those pregnant, with psychosis, suicidal ideation or active substance abuse disorder were excluded. The intervention consisted of weekly, two-hour sessions for a total of 9 weeks. Main outcomes were pain level, pain interference, and physical and emotional function measured by the PROMIS 29 pre- and post-intervention, depression and stress, measured by PHQ-8 and PSS-10, respectively. Focus group participants discussed the feasibility of the intervention. Analyses involved t-tests to examine our outcome data, and qualitative thematic analysis for focus group data. RESULTS: This open study recruited 11 subjects, 10 women, average age of 51.9 years; 50% of participants attended more than four sessions. The outcomes showed a trend toward reduced depression, pain, fatigue, and anxiety. Qualitative themes of reduced pain, increased knowledge for healthier living, and improved access to pain treatment using an appropriately adapted intervention were found. CONCLUSIONS: It was feasible to implement the Latino IMGV model in the outpatient setting at BMC. Trends in reduction of pain and depression, as well as increased knowledge for healthier living and better access to CIM modalities were found. Future powered studies are needed to further implement this model.

This dissertation is a case study of Radio Bilingüe, a community-driven, non-profit, radio network with transnational reach. With this case, I examine the reasons that gave way to the development of the radio, including focusing on the roles of media practitioners as producers of radio content and facilitators of community participation and the significance of the radio in the lives of Latino communities living across the United States. Methodologically, this is a qualitative study based on ethnographic methods of inquiry and archival research. Through ethnographic methods, it was possible to describe the roles of media practitioners, while archival research was carried out to gather a number of primary and secondary documents, which were analyzed through textual analysis to piece together the history of Radio Bilingüe. Throughout the study I weave together a few interrelated areas: first, I chronicle the history and structure of the radio station that for nearly 34 years has been at the service of underserved and under-presented Latino immigrants living in the United States; second, I examine the profession of media practitioners and their participatory practices for community engagement; and finally, I discuss the place of the radio in the lives of its listening audience to understand how it helps sustain community ties and shape identity across local, national, and transnational places.

abstract: Psychological distress occurs at disproportionate rates among minority groups and individuals with lower socioeconomic status. This dissertation focuses on the relationship between living in a disadvantaged neighborhood and distress among Latinos, the formal and informal organizations that mediate the direct and indirect relationship between disadvantage and distress in this population, and the differences of social stress processes based on aspects of Latino social status, linguistic acculturation status, and the percentage of residents in the neighborhood that identify as Latino. This dissertation focuses its investigation on Latinos living in Chicago, specifically asking: In a metropolitan city, can the presence of formal and informal community organizations protect Latinos living in disadvantage neighborhoods from experiencing psychological distress? The findings demonstrate an indirect association between disadvantage and distress though objective disorganization and perception of disorganization. Both the density of community centers and block watch had an indirect protective effect, mediating the relationship between neighborhood disadvantage and distress, but did not decrease the indirect effect of disadvantage on distress through objective or perceptions of disorganization. The results of this dissertation suggest that changes to a neighborhood's environment may decrease population rates of distress in disadvantaged neighborhoods. / Dissertation/Thesis / Ph.D. Social Work 2014

This paper examines the educational acculturation experience of Latinos in the United States (U.S.) and the processes of identity formation. Through the historical Latino experience in the early 20th century, we can see the remaining influences of historical inequality (e.g. exploitation of labor, de jure segregation) through negative perceptions of Latinos. Negative stereotypes and incorrect assumptions presented in society (e.g. media, educational system, and justice system) perpetuate inferiority in comparison to White Americans. In the context of a school environment, Latino children begin to realize they are different. When non-native English speakers enter the classroom, immediate differences in language, cultural values, and peer interactions impact identity development and negatively influence self-perceptions. The Two-Way Immersion (TWI) approach to teaching will allow Latinos to develop their ethnic identity without interference from the dominant American culture through an integrative language approach of English and Spanish instruction. These are the beginning steps for creating stronger ethnic identity, biculturalism, and potential method to reverse institutionalized discrimination through education.